The New Republic's Losses

https://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2014/12/the-new-republic-losses

Dana Milbank, writing in the Washington Post about New Republic owner Chris Hughes: "his spending spree caused annual losses to swell from $1 million when he bought the struggling magazine (he was its fifth owner in a decade) to $5 million."

Joe Nocera, writing in the New York Times: "Thus it was that in 2012, with The New Republic's losses rising to around $3 million, Peretz sold the magazine to Chris Hughes."

These are conflicting accounts of how much money the New Republic was losing before it was sold to Mr. Hughes. One account puts it at $1 million, another puts it at $3 million. I doubt either account will be corrected. And maybe it is just a question of terms — the previous calendar year versus the "trailing twelve months." But the disagreement over facts is a good example of how journalists at large news organizations can write about something that they are familiar with — the news business — and still manage to arrive at only a crude approximation of the truth, if that.